


Things Grown in Darkness

by beknighted



Series: Illuminations Come Too Late [3]
Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Big Brother Thor (Marvel), Blindness, Loki regrets, Magic, Mistakes, POV Loki (Marvel), Parent Frigga (Marvel)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-23
Updated: 2018-03-23
Packaged: 2019-04-06 18:02:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,449
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14062389
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beknighted/pseuds/beknighted
Summary: With the hindsight afforded by a tortured man, Loki reflects on a failure of his childhood.





	Things Grown in Darkness

Somewhere, somewhen, two children—brothers—sit at the advent of their time, each with his own brand of a stubborn mind. One of them is lying, as always. It is raining, so the other is bored, and willing to play along. 

“I am telling you, it is a _spell,”_ Loki says, his face flushed with the determination to be right. He sits perched on the edge of a windowsill, ever between flight and falling, peering at the other boy to gauge his reaction. “I have read about it. No one is just _born_ like that, even a god.” 

The other, Thor, wrinkles his nose. He paces, leaving the lounging in precipitous places to his brother.“I thought Father said he was different from us, like a different kind of Asgardian, a more magic one.” 

“A more magic one,” Loki echoes, twitching with a barely contained laugh. He chooses his words carefully. “But really, can you imagine how powerful he is? Heimdall can see and hear anything and anyone. And all from a bit of spellwork.” 

The pacing boy, a picture of pent up energy, looks suspiciously at Loki. “I’m listening.” 

“Good,” says Loki, “because I learned it. I know the spell.” 

“Balderdash!” Thor says, as he has been waiting to, punctuating his new favorite word with an index finger. There is a convenient rumble of thunder outside. “Your parlor tricks are not that powerful.” 

“Parlor tricks! Give me one good reason why not.” 

“You would have used the spell already, and would be crowing about it to everyone.” 

Loki is briefly impressed at this reasoned conclusion, but he presses his advantage, not even noticing that the rain has begun to slant and spatter the windowsill. “But I don’t want that kind of burden. It must get very tedious, having to turn a blind eye to war, unable to do anything but watch.” 

At this, his brother resumes his pacing, swinging his arms now. “You would not _have_ to do nothing, though. You could see your enemies coming, so you could never lose. It could be fun.” Thor’s blue eyes are in motion too; it seems there is not a part of him that isn’t. “It could be very fun.” A pause. “You say you learned the spell?” 

 

Frigga does not consider herself to be a very conventional queen, perhaps a far more proficient one than conventional, but she indulges in some cliches. Tending a millennia old rose garden is the least of them. These roses are alive in a deeper sense than most gardens; they shift their sharpest thorns out of the way as she prunes the rows with the gentle practicality with which she governs her sons. Nevermind that it is raining--a bit of willpower and whispered words, and the rain waits until she has passed to fall. 

Perhaps. Perhaps it was not as perfect as this, but memories are painted anew when we remember the lost. 

She hears her eldest coming and gestures exasperatedly at the roses as if to part the seas, and sure enough a whirlwind of red fabric and golden hair comes skidding down into the courtyard and between the buds. He looks stricken, like a laugh changed to a cry of fear. She has seen this particular face of genuine dismay more than once, and from both sons. Invariably it has something to do with a fall from a great height or the provocation of some wild animal.

“He’s done it now, Mother!” Thor exclaims, panting. 

“Done what?” 

“Blinded himself! I told him! I told him he couldn’t do it!” 

“I’m sure you did,” Frigga says dryly, but she sets down her work and lets Thor conduct her to the boys’ most recent haunt, an old guardhouse on the edge of the inner courtyard. Her youngest has found a corner in which to lodge himself, pressing his hands to his face as if to hold his very skull together. Frigga feels a chill, but she speaks softly to him. 

“What kind of spell was it?” she asks, sitting down next to him. “Let me look at you.” 

Loki shakes his head. Frigga knows--painfully--how hard it is for the boy to be like this, with what he considers his greatest strength, preliminary sorcery, having turned against him. _Weakness._ He scrutinizes everyone for it, and no one more than himself. She touches his hand, gently. 

“Loki.” 

Though Frigga expects to see tears when he lifts his hands, there are none. His eyes are a terrible milky white. Again she feels that chill. “What were you trying to do?” 

Silence. His hand reaches out blindly, and when it finds hers, it seizes it with a force she does not expect. The storm comes to a head outside, cracking open in a deluge of water, so when he speaks breathily, she has to lean closer to catch his words. 

“Can’t hear either. Hear nothing.” 

“ _Loki,_ ” she says, though only Thor can bear witness to it. Thor, who stands rooted to the spot, his blue eyes wide and much too bright. 

“Will he be alright?” Thor asks. “He will won’t he? I told him.” He runs out of words. This is a different kind of mischief; so rarely is it at Loki’s own expense that Thor does not know what to do. If it is a trick, it is a particularly cruel one. Frigga can see Thor looking with a searching expectancy that, at any moment, Loki will grin and dust himself off, and the white of his eyes will pass like the clouds. So Frigga sweeps her younger son into her arms. Admittedly, he is much too big to do this now, but she manages, and whisks him to a warmer chamber. Thor must run to keep up with her. Anyone they pass is freely encouraged to step aside by a fierce look from Frigga. 

It would damn near break Loki to wake up and find he had an audience. 

When she sets him down, she can feel that he is panicking, breathing much too fast. Thor, in a fit of innocent wisdom, takes his brother’s hand so Frigga can detach herself. The queen closes her eyes, feels for the quickening pulse of the universe. 

Magic is made for the gentle, she taught her son. For he who can gather and embrace the energy between worlds. 

In the darkness inside Loki’s head, he is screaming, silently. This is _not_ how he wanted this to go. As capable young people are when they are failed by their art, he is shattered, and terribly alone. The sudden unremitting and indifferent blackness of it terrifies him. Even when his vision returns in a flood of storm light and Thor’s face, when he can hear his mother launching into a mixture of relieved laughter and stern words, some part of him remains there, moored in an unreachable place where he is falling-- 

 

\--falling into hell. Years later, in that moment of release, of choked back shame and horror, Loki chooses uncertainty--and possibly an end--over an endless prison. Loki lets go of the staff and watches his brother and his father and his treason, blazing in their faces as he falls, fade.

He falls for eternity. 

Into hell. It was his brother that he tried the enhancement spell, the simple _lie,_ on. On that stifled and rainy afternoon. It backfired on him. It failed. He failed. It was his brother that he pitted himself against, in a mad rush that spanned two worlds, but it backfired on him, he failed again, again and again, never enough. 

“You are cast out,” says Thanos. Loki grows in his exile, but like all things grown in darkness which are meant for light, he loses his color and a little bit of his mind. He forgets what it means to be free of pain and cold, he thinks of that moment of being trapped in the self-made darkness of his own head, and he _longs_ for it. “They do not grieve for you.” 

 

When Thor and Loki meet again, it is in the midst of war. In Loki’s quietly broken mind, it registers that Thor looks as he did when Loki awoke from his blinding spell. Guilty. Angry. Deeply, and irrevocably, relieved that his brother is alright. So Thor makes demands. He feigns his grief, or perhaps not. Perhaps he is truly so foolish as to be sentimental, after all this time. 

“I remember you tossing me into an abyss,” Loki says. _I remember you forsaking me, and I remember hating you._

But when the two brothers stand at the advent of their time, one of them is lying, as always.


End file.
